5 Ways Financial Institutions Are Elevating Their Customer Experiences

As customers’ banking needs change, banks and credit unions must adapt and alter how they provide their services. The transition to online banking and providing more self-service capabilities are examples of how modern consumers prefer faster and more convenient methods when interacting with a company. The same applies when customers reach out to their bank’s customer support team. Some may prefer to reach out through email, while others would rather interact with an agent through a chat than on a call.  

It is important to ensure that financial institutions offer easy and accessible services to all customers, to ensure a seamless experience. These goals can be accomplished with solutions such as ice Contact Center, an omnichannel contact center solution that can help modernize businesses with application integrations, AI, real-time analytics, and more! 

Continue reading to discover how five financial institutions elevated their customer banking experiences with ice Contact Center. 

1. Transformed Operations with Automated Reporting 

A credit union previously relied on Microsoft Excel for basic reporting, only tracking the number of incoming calls. This required the organization’s agents to manually input the data collected after each call, a process that was both time-consuming and prone to human error. In addition, they also struggled to monitor key statistics such as call duration, response times, and more.  

With ice, the organization can automatically generate reports from the system, without having to manually track the data. The company also has access to real-time insights into agent productivity levels, queue statistics, call volumes, and more. This gives them all the information they need to make strategic decisions. 

2. Centralized Agent Management to Extend Hours of Operation 

A bank had multiple operations across different time zones and did not have a centralized number to call. They faced a problem where some agents weren’t receiving any calls in certain time zones, whereas in others, they would be experiencing high call volumes. This caused customers to wait a long time before being connected to an agent, as all the phone lines were dispersed.  

ice Contact Center unified the agents across the different time zones into one virtual queue environment. By consolidating the agents’ separate phone lines into a toll-free number, ice enabled customers to call in and connect to whichever agent is available. This allows agents to be more accessible and extends their hours of operation, resulting in improved customer service for the organization. 

3. Offloaded Agents Workload and Simplified FAQ’s 

A trade association’s previous IVR menu was complicated and difficult for customers to navigate. Customers would often bypass the menu and press 0 to speak with an agent. This resulted in agents getting frustrated as they spent a lot of time answering common, repetitive questions.  

When the organization migrated their contact center to ice, they streamlined their customer service by introducing a feature that allows callers to speak their needs instead of dialing on a keypad. The organization found that most of their inbound calls were people requesting information about interest rates and exchange rates. Using ComputerTalk’s IVR menu and text-to-speech functionality, the organization can play back the responses to these requests, thus offloading work from agents and allowing them to focus on solving more complex issues. 

4. Improved Profitability and Reduced Costs  

A global bank based out of Britain, who provides retail, corporate, and investment banking services along with corporate and investment banking services, was operating a large internal contact center for their IT help desk. They were using an on-premises contact center solution that was unable to accommodate their staffing requirements and was costly to maintain. The bank decided to seek out a modernized contact center solution that could quickly scale the number of agents up or down, as needed, in order to manage their operations. During their search, they found ComputerTalk’s cloud-based contact center solution, ice.  

With ice, they were able to modernize their contact center by moving to the cloud to accommodate staffing changes. The organization also integrated their contact center with a custom chatbot that handles inquiries like a live agent. The integration enabled them to reduce contact center staffing needs by over 50% during the span of 3 years, resulting in significant cost savings and a boost in profitability. 

5. Increased First-Call Resolution 

A bank previously relied on a legacy solution with which they had experienced operational inefficiencies that negatively affected both the agent and customer experiences. The agents struggled to quickly retrieve information from their database, resulting in long wait times for customers, and causing them to be frustrated with the agent.  

After switching to ice Contact Center, a custom web-based interface was built to connect their ice application to their database. This connection allows agents to easily access and navigate all company-related information that can aid them while on a call with a customer. Today, the data retrieval process runs so quickly that agents can remain in a natural conversation with callers and guide them on the next steps without missing a beat. The bank was able to reduce the number of call transfers, holds, and callbacks, thus increasing their first-call resolution. 

Transform Your Customer Service with ice Contact Center 

These are just a few examples of how financial institutions and credit unions are using contact center technologies to improve their customer service. By modernizing your contact center with advanced technologies, you can provide faster, more efficient, and more satisfying customer experiences. Whether it’s through automated reporting or centralized agent management, the right contact center can take your operations to new heights! 

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help your business, check out our website to learn more about how a contact center adds value to your financial or banking institution, or speak with a specialist today!